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School safety a continuing talking point as PBC School Board meets today

More than a month after the deadly December shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, school safety continues to be top of mind in Palm Beach County.

The Palm Beach County School Board will meet today (Wednesday) in a closed-door meeting to discuss school security and risk management.

From there, the board will hold its regular school board meeting at 5 p.m., where it will be asked again to tackle the issue of security in its 185 schools.

Earlier this month, the mayors from Boynton Beach, Riviera Beach, Lake Park and Mangonia Park held a rally to announce that they would petition the school board to put metal detectors and guards at the entrance of all schools.

Riviera Beach Mayor Thomas Masters said Monday evening that he still plans to make such a presentation to the school board during their meeting today.

“I will be advocating for this,” Masters said by phone, noting that he and the mayors from Boynton Beach and Mangonia Park will present the petition to the board members.

Currently, none of the school district’s 185 schools have metal detectors.

School board chairman Chuck Shaw said recently that school board members have been getting some input from parents about safety, but mostly have been hearing from security companies trying to use the shooting as an opportunity to offer their services.

Shaw said some of the security upgrade demands made by residents, like the group of mayors who are calling for metal detectors, have not been very well thought out.

“People jump in with ideas that they don’t know the ramifications of what it takes to do them, like metal detectors,” Shaw said. “Can you imagine how many metal detectors it would take to cover a whole campus?”

The school district is already working on a comprehensive school-by-school analysis of security, although it’s unclear when that analysis will be finished.

Any recommended security upgrades would have to be funded in next year’s budget; the board plans to have a workshop on Feb. 12 to start its development of next year’s budget.

Security is certainly not the only thing on the school board’s agenda tonight. Among other items:

— Approval of an updated job description for the district’s chief of support operations. Joe Sanches, who currently holds that position, announced last week that he will be leaving for a job in the private sector in March;

— Approval for a grant to help with diabetes prevention and control among district employees;

— Vote on a revised policy for the district’s purchasing department that makes a number of changes, including delineation of who is authorized to approve purchases of different sizes.